SUN-RISE (1873).
SUN-RISE (1873).
2. While we watched the sun’s return, we had also an opportunity of looking on each other. How shocked and surprised were we with the change which had been wrought on us in the long Polar night! Our sunken cheeks were overspread with pallor; we had all the signs of convalescence after a long illness—the sharp-pointed nose, the sunken eye. The eyes of all had suffered from the light of lamps which had burnt for months; those especially who had used them for hard work. But all these consequences were of short duration under the beneficent influence of the daylight and the spring sun, which soon brought colour into our faces. Cheerfulness gradually returned to all on board theTegetthoff, as we revelled in the warm beams of the sun. We built a house without a roof, and open to the south, and thither the healthy and the sick on calm fine days used to repair from the dreary ship, and sun themselves like lizards. But within the ship it was still night.
3. The visits of bears again became numerous. February 17th one of about five feet long was shot very close to the ship, and two days afterwards a second came near us, but was scared away by the awkwardness of the hunters. The dogs however pursued him, and we were compelled from fears for their safety to follow up the chase. The temperature of -33° F., and a pretty strong wind against which we had to run in the pursuit, brought on in some of our party palpitation of the heart and spitting of blood, and our return to the ship was a matter of some difficulty. On the morning of the 20th another bear came close to the ship, was fired at, but missed, and got away. Palmich, Haller, and Klotz immediately gave chase, though the temperature was -40° F., and the wind high. After a short time Palmich returned with his face frost-bitten, and the Tyrolese after several hours, without any success, but with their feet so frost-bitten that they had lost all feeling in them. The second stage of the malady had begun, which renders amputation almost a necessity. For several hours their feet had to be rubbed with snow till sensation returned, and with returning sensation much suffering; large swellings as big as a man’s fist rose on their feet, which were reduced only after the application of ice for several days. Again, in the grey of the morning ofFebruary 22nd a bear came within eighty paces of the ship, which Sussich, the watch on deck, after several shots, which the animal seemed not in the least to regard, at last hit and killed. By a wound on his right forepaw we recognised our friend whom we had hotly chased a few days before. He was six feet in length, and in his stomach there was nothing but a small piece of the skin of a seal. Sussich was overjoyed with his success, and for the whole day tried to drag everyone outside the ship to show the result of his prowess, “Se mi non era, il copava tutti,” he added, with a look of contempt on those who had not been so successful as himself.
THE CARNIVAL ON THE ICE.
THE CARNIVAL ON THE ICE.
4. Although at the end of February the sun rose with a carmine light which imparted an indescribable charm to the fields of snow and ice, we were doomed to disappointment in our expectation of bright and clear weather in the after-part of the day. Soon after sun-rise, white frosty mists gathered over the ice-fields, making the sun as he shone through them a mere ball of light, or completely concealing him. On February 24th we enjoyed the peculiar spectacle of seeingthe sun appear, the temperature being -44° F., distorted by refraction, through the thick mists on the horizon, as if he were quite flat, beamless, and of a coppery red. The end of February reminded us of the carnival time of the land of the South, and the crew appeared in such masques as they could command; but their masquerading formed a sad and mocking contrast with the gravity of our position. The men bestowed all their art on “Sumbu,” who was dressed up as the demon “Lindwurm,” and deported himself in a manner highly becoming his costume.
5. With the month of March the spring had, in name at least, begun; but in our sense of the word no spring as yet appeared. Instead of the joyous gleams of early vegetation, a blinding white waste environed us; instead of the perfumed breath of flowers and the soft air of spring, there rose driving clouds of ice-needles; and parhelia of almost daily occurrence shone in a heavy sleepy fashion through white frosty mists. The atmosphere was filled with snow; to be convinced of this we had only to look at the sun when the weather seemed clear and bright. This continual fall of snow as fine as dust was the cause of the retardation of the evaporation of the ice. The influence of the sun was so great, that on March 3 the black-bulb thermometer indicated the unusual temperature of 45° F., and a layer of snow on the bows of the vessel showed evident signs of diminution. The thermometer, in the sun, rose eight degrees March 6, and nine degrees two days after. The weather was calm and clear, and the increasing influence of the sun was a most joyful sensation. A cube of ice freely suspended showed during the second half of March a daily diminution of 1/100 of its weight from evaporation; while in the sea itself its behaviour was the very opposite; the cube of ice, which was submerged to a depth of ten feet from February 19th to March 5th, showed at the latter date an increase of its mass, amounting to ¾ of an inch round its surface. In the beginning and end of March the cold was so severe, that the thermometer every day for three weeks marked -35° F. Calms and clear weather, however, characterized this period of the spring, and snow-drifting and a clouded sky were rare. On the 13th of March the full moon again appeared in the azure twilight ofthe western heavens, and its soft light fringed with silver the dark ranges of ice. The days became longer, and the shadows cast by the masses of ice were shorter and more marked, and every one who remained long in the open air was forced to use snow-spectacles. Small avalanches began to fall from the rigging, and the masts, spars, and ropes lost their white frosted aspect. On the 22nd the fore-part of the ship’s hull facing the south was completely free from snow and its dark colour was visible. On the 29th the temperature in the sun exceeded the temperature at 9.30A.M.by 34° F.; and on the 30th we could for the first time observe the melting of the snow on the seams of the timber of the ship’s hull. The enumeration of these events, insignificant as they may appear, will serve to show with what attention the Polar navigator notes the minutest occurrence due to the influence of the sun.
6. Welcome, though illusive, harbingers of the returning summer were the first birds, whose arrival we greeted on the 19th. These were little divers, which flew over the ship to the open spaces of water amid the ice, there to seek their food in the countless crustaceæ which abound in them. Magnificent auroras continued to illuminate our nights; and although the duration of their intensity was much too brief to serve as a source of light, there was a charm in these phenomena which their daily recurrence could not weaken.
7. While under these various influences the health of all on board theTegetthoffgreatly improved, we were threatened with the serious calamity of losing our excellent physician, Dr. Kepes, who fell ill on the 13th of the month. For two weeks we were kept in a state of anxious fear for him; and our anxieties were increased as we had to treat his malady without the necessary knowledge and experience. To our great joy, however, he was spared to us; and our supply of fresh bear’s-flesh was henceforth reserved for him.
8. For some time the bears had observed a very distressing reserve and shyness in their visits, On the 15th one came near us, and as Pekel had for some time announced his approach, he found a long front of rifles drawn up behind some masses of ice to give him a warm reception. He, as usual, came on under the wind, showing considerable interest in ouredifices. He then ascended a small ice-crag, and, after balancing himself carefully, sat down on the top of it, with his snout uplifted, snuffing all round. This seemed so ludicrous to some of our party that they burst out into a laugh so loud, that the bear came down from his pinnacle in evident astonishment, and with much circumspection drew nearer and nearer till at a short distance from us he fell mortally wounded. He was, alas! a very small animal, about 5½ feet long, and his stomach was absolutely empty. On the 30th of March another came close to the ship; the watch on shore fired at, but missed him, whereupon both the watch and the bear took to flight.
THE “TEGETTHOFF” DRIFTING IN PACK-ICE.—MARCH 1873.
THE “TEGETTHOFF” DRIFTING IN PACK-ICE.—MARCH 1873.
9. April at last arrived, and with it the time of icicles, which hung down from every yard of the ship, and from every rope of the rigging, from every icy ridge and crag. The melting and decaying of the ice, though always a source of satisfaction when the question of its breaking up is discussed, went on, to our impatient desires, with intolerable slowness. What wasit to us that we were able to read even at midnight on the 2nd of April; that the number of divers and sea-gulls constantly increased; that on the 6th the difference of temperature between sun and shade was 18°; that the black-bulb thermometer on the 20th showed 43° F.; that the sun on the 11th rose about two o’clock in the morning, and from the 16th remained constantly in the heavens? What did all this matter? The constant light notwithstanding, we were still environed with the signs of deepest winter, and the forms and masses of ice collapsed with a slow deliberation that tortured us. We were no longer to be satisfied and amused with the spectacle of parhelia, even though the phenomenon should appear, as it did on the 1st of April, with eight suns. Months of weary waiting still lay before us; daily we had to arm ourselves with patience, as, when we came on deck, we discovered the apparently unchangeable character of our environment, with all its forms, which had become familiar to us down to the smallest details. Reluctantly condemned to almost total idleness, we filled up our time with such occupations as fancy suggested. Some of our people built a tower of ice on a level part of our floe; others tried their rifles—tried often enough before—at empty bottles as targets. Along with the Tyrolese I constructed a road through hills of ice, over passes and ridges, going up and down in serpentine paths, making a circuit of about three miles round the ship. The labour of weeks with picks and shovels was expended in making and preserving it; after each downfall of snow this road had to be dug out afresh. Our passing and repassing along it through a maze of ice not only beneficially exercised our bodies, but furnished opportunities for training our dogs to drag heavy-laden sledges. I continued also to fill my portfolio with studies of scenery in the ice, and I accustomed myself, whenever there was no wind, whatever might be the temperature, to draw for hours together with no other protection to my hands than light gloves.
10. April had begun with a temperature of -38° F.; as the month advanced it steadily increased. At the end of the month the extreme of cold was but -20° F. But the weather had now lost the clearness of the early spring; and constant calms, together with the frequent falls of snow,undid the work of the few hours of the day on which the sun shone. The ice was covered with deep snow; on the level we sank ankle deep, while among the hummocks it was up to our knees. Sledging would have been impracticable. Among the changes produced by the softening of the weather, none was greater or more agreeable than the return of daylight to the cabin, when we took off the covering of the skylight and removed the tent-roof from the fore-part of the ship. Once more to be able to read without the dull glimmer of artificial light was an extraordinary event in our monotonous life. For five months our lamps had been burning in our mess-room, so that the walls were black with smoke, and it was a work of no small labour to make them clean and pleasant. The unloading of the ship’s hold was, however, a far heavier, though necessary task; the thick crusts of ice which had accumulated on its sides must be removed, lest the provisions should be damaged by their thawing; and there was no time to lose, for the temperature in the hold was only 1° below zero. The provisions, which had been left out on the ice, were again stowed in the ship, the cessation of the ice-pressures rendering this precautionary measure useless.
11. Round a ship which has wintered in the ice there is gradually accumulated a mass of rubbish of all kinds, of which cinders form a considerable constituent. These, when thrown out in small quantities, sink at once into the snow, while larger quantities act as a non-conducting layer. Hence we were surrounded by a maze of holes, big and little, alternating with plateaus, under which winter still continued to linger. When thaw-water made its appearance, all this was transformed into a succession of lakes and islands, which we bridged over by planks.
12. Meantime we began our labours of digging out the ship. We removed the wall of snow, which had served as an outer garment and protection during the winter, and the hard-trodden layer which covered the deck a foot thick. In clearing away from the after-part of the ship, we discovered that the machinery protecting the screw had been torn away by the ice-pressures. The mischief done, however, was not considerable; and as the ship made no water, we consoled ourselves with the thought, that she had sustained no materialinjury, though she had lain so long out of water perched on the floe.
13. The continued cessation of movements in the ice induced Weyprecht to erect a tent at no great distance from the ship, to carry on in it observations of the magnetic constants, which were taken on certain appointed days. On the night of one of such days, Orel, who conducted these observations, was surprised by the visit of a bear. His shouts for help brought us on deck, but before we could actually reach him, the seaman on the watch had killed the bear with an explosive bullet. Hitherto these animals had shown little courage in the neighbourhood of the ship, and to shoot them from the deck exposed no one to any danger; but this incident showed us that we could not count securely on their actions. Soon after this we had another surprise. Stiglich, the seaman on watch on shore, suddenly found himself confronted with a bear about eight paces off. Throwing his cap to the bear, he made a rush for the rope-ladders of the ship, but fell in his hurry and confusion. Carlsen, hearing his cries for help, hastened to the rescue, and dexterously shot the pursuer. A glorious event for Carlsen! who used to tell us strange stories of his encounters with bears: how he had scared them away with the glance of his eye; and how once in Novaya Zemlya he had frightened away a whole pack of them by the magic of his glance. All doubts in the prowess of his eye were silenced to-day by the more unquestionable prowess of his rifle. On the 28th of May a bear clambering over the wall of ice close astern of the ship was shot dead with an explosive bullet. His stomach was empty, but notwithstanding his leanness, he furnished more meat than many others, for he was fully seven feet long.
14. At the end of April the force of the winds so loosened the compactness of the ice, that dark strips hanging above the horizon in all directions announced the existence of numerous fissures, although they were invisible even from the masts of the ship. We counted on these signs with such unshaken confidence, that when on the 2nd of May we heard in the distance the now familiar sound of the ice-pressures, we heard them not only without dismay, but as the voice of a joyous message. Three-quarters of a year had passed awaysince we were first caught in the ice—a time laden to us with bitter disappointments to our hopes, and great dangers to our lives. The hour of our long and ardently desired liberation seemed at hand. If once we got free, it lay within the bounds of possibility that we might reach, if not the somewhat mythical Gillis’ Land, then at least the uninhabited Arctic coasts of Siberia. Siberia had, in fact, become the rosiest of our hopes. Some, indeed, still indulged in extravagant expectations and counted on the discovery of new lands, even while they drifted with the ice. But our wishes for the most part had become so subdued, that the discovery of the smallest cliff would have satisfied our ambition as discoverers.
15. But Nature’s laws held their own course, undisturbed by our desires. Snow continued to fall in abundance, and spread its mantle over the ice. The constant round of downfalls and evaporation was a sad bar to our hopes. In the beginning of May the snow began to thaw on the surface, and became soft and sticky. Even in the depth of winter it was never hard, but like the fine dry grains of driving sand. This change in the snow, which occurs a fortnight earlier than in Greenland, compelled us to substitute our black leather boots for those of sailcloth, which we had hitherto worn. On the 2nd of May the temperature fell to -8° F., but it now began to rise gradually, so that it sometimes reached the freezing point about the end of the month, and on the 29th rose five degrees above it. The mean temperature of the month, however, was not above 16° F. But the difference of temperature in the sun and the shade became greater and greater. The thermometer marked -18° F. at 6P.M.of the 1st of May, and on the 11th the black-bulb thermometer showed 90° F. at 3P.M., while the common instrument gave only 14° F. In the middle of the month, after the heavy winds fell, we were enveloped with dark fog banks; stray beams of the sun broke through the warm misty atmosphere, and dark skies were succeeded by masses of white vapour illuminated by the sun. Just as in our happier clime, the Arctic April has her alternations of cloud and sunshine.
16. Hitherto the only birds which had visited us were divers and gulls. Once only a snow-bunting flew among us, and fearlessly settled on the ship. On the 24th of May theauks made their appearance, and from that date we were constantly entertained by the whirring sounds of their flight. As they keep one direction in their flight, we could shoot those only which passed over the ship; they were a useful addition to our table, though they had to be steeped in vinegar to make them palatable. The majestic Burgomaster Gull appeared somewhat later, and later still the “Ice-birds” frequented the shores of the lakes around us, and hovered round the remains of the bears we had shot. These birds settled with the greatest boldness in the immediate neighbourhood of the ship, and day and night filled the air with their wild shrill cries.
17. By the middle of March, Krisch, the engineer, had put the steam machinery in working order, but another month elapsed before the screw-propeller, which had been frozen fast, was set free; our fears lest it should refuse to act proved to be groundless. As, however, there was no prospect of our being able to use steam for some time, it was thought advisable to dig out and raise the rudder in order to secure it.
18. On the 26th of May a partial eclipse of the sun was visible in our latitude; but from an error in our calculations we had ante-dated the commencement of the observation by about two hours and a half. Everyone on board who had an instrument at his command stood ready to observe the passage of the moon over the sun’s disk. After waiting for some time in vain, we discovered the error we had committed as to the time of the beginning of the eclipse, but in order that the dignity of astronomical observation might not be degraded in the eye of the crew, we still held our ground with the telescopes in our hands. Two hours of such suspense enabled us to feel that there could be no more perfect fulfilment of the punishment of Sisyphus than being condemned to wait for an eclipse of the sun which would not come off! At last the eclipse took place, but not until great disgust had been excited in the minds of men who were too much inclined to regard the whole thing as a piece of humbug. At the height of the eclipse about one-third only of the sun’s disk was obscured, and the sun was so covered with mist that we could look at it without the use of coloured glasses. The whole duration of the eclipse was one hour and fifty-six minutes.
19. From the 1st of the month the number of living creatures belonging to the expedition had been increased by the birth of four Newfoundland puppies, who passed the earliest days of their youth in a tent erected on the ice, and artificially heated to the temperature of a European May. But all our care in rearing this litter was frustrated by one of these little Polar wretches, who, after sucking his mother till he was as round as a drum, lay on his brothers as they slept, and stifled them. This little criminal received the name of Torossy, and soon became the pet of the crew, and a favourite with all the other dogs. The fame which he afterwards gained made him an important member of the expedition. All the dogs had become so hardy during the past winter, that they now slept outside their kennels, finding the inside too warm for them.
1. The time crept away with indescribable monotony. The crew performed their heavy labours, but of events there were none. The only change in our position was the constant decay of the buttresses and walls of ice, until the frozen sea lay like a snowy chaos before us. Pure sharp-edged ice was nowhere to be seen; the edges were no longer transparent; evaporation had transformed the surface into a kind of glacier-snow. June 1, we had the greatest degree of cold of the month, the thermometer marking 13° F.; but on the last day it rose to 32·2° F.; the mean temperature being 31·1° F. Every week brought us promises of summer. On the 1st the black-bulb thermometer reached 98° F.; on the 14th rain fell for the first time; on the 16th the temperature at 9 o’clockA.M., was 41·5° F., on the 26th 46·4° F., and on the 29th even 50·2° F. On these days the air seemed to have the pleasant mildness of southern climes, and when there was no wind we felt an oppressive sultriness. Wreaths of mist moved along the icy wastes which glowed with sunlight, while the long dark lines of ice-wall lay in deep shadow. The air was filled with flocks of birds; day and night we heard the shrill cries of the Robber-gulls, ever and anon mingled with the barking of the dogs in full pursuit of them. Flocks of rotges congregated without fear in the narrow basins of distant “leads;” and the “great gulls,” shunningcompanionship, sat for hours on the top of an ice-cliff, or in the middle of a floe.
2. No one who has not actually seen it, can imagine the blaze of light in the Arctic regions on clear days, or the glow which floats sometimes over the cold white ice-floes, with their outlines in constant vibration, while refraction transforms the icebergs into a variety of shapes. The sun’s power is sometimes so great as to blister the skin in a few hours, and the glare from snow and ice produces snow-blindness, if the eyes be not carefully protected. At a little distance the sea appears to be of a deep black colour, though it still preserves its ultramarine hues in the narrow “leads;” even the pure blue of the heavens may be called almost black when compared with the dazzling sheen of the ice. In the middle of June there was an incessant dripping and oozing in the ice-world, and streams of thaw-water flowed into the open fissures. By the end of the month the surface of the ice resembled snow; and even at some depth it was viscous, instead of brittle and hard as glass, as it is during the colder season. Streams of thaw-water ran through the softened and saturated snow. Small lakes were formed on the levels, and swamps of snow, wearing a traitorous exterior, surrounded their borders. In the summer of 1873 we observed a vertical decrease of five or six feet in the thickness of the ice; but this diminution in thickness was from the surface downwards, while in the sea itself there was little or no thawing, because the temperature of its surface was still below zero. The moisture, from which there was no escape, became exceedingly troublesome. In spite of our stout leather boots we had never the comfort of dry feet during the whole of the summer, and this we felt the more, as our labours to free the ship, which we had commenced at the beginning of May, necessitated our being constantly amid the snow and ice.
3. At the end of May the ship began slowly to settle, and the water rose between the ice and the hull on the fore-part of the ship. But we soon discovered that these small changes would not suffice to free us from our prison-house, but that we must ourselves endeavour to loosen the fetters which held us fast, if it were only to banish gloomy thoughts of thefuture by action of some kind or other. Hence constant digging, sawing, and blasting on our floe, through May, June, July, and August—labours in which the whole crew of the ship, with the exception of the sick and of the cook, took part; labours, alas! which admonished us of the impotence of man when he contends against the power of Nature. Only on the port side of the ship were our efforts to dig through the floe at all successful; on the starboard side the floe had been so enormously increased by the tables of ice forced upon one another, that we had not pierced through the ice after sinking a shaft eighteen feet deep; and at last the water, forcing itself through the pores of the ice, compelled us to desist from the labour of sinking deeper. The process of sawing was possible only where we had broken through the ice—that is, on the port side; yet even there the great thickness of the floe necessitated the construction of longer instruments, for which the iron casing of the engine-room had to furnish the material. The difficulty of sawing increases with the thickness of the ice in an almost incredible manner. It is easy enough to cut through a floe, four or five feet thick, but to break up one, eight or ten feet thick, is a matter of great difficulty. Our saws too, even when they were lengthened, permitted a play of only a foot; and their twisting, as they cut deep, proved a great hindrance. Besides, when we had cut to the depth of a fathom, the saws were always frozen fast, and when we attempted to free them by blasting they were very often broken in pieces. But even the sections, made with so much difficulty, often proved to be quite useless, as they were frozen together again by broken ice left in the cut. Blasting with gunpowder proved as ineffectual as in the previous year; in fact, the process was only applicable to ice-blocks which had been loosened by sawing, and which could not be broken up by the crow-bar alone.
4. By the middle of June we were at last convinced that the thickness of the ice rendered it impossible to join together, by sawing, the two-and-twenty holes which we had dug out round the ship. Henceforward our labours were confined to the formation of a basin at the fore-part of the ship. Although we saw the impossibility of liberating the vessel, as long asshe rested on a mountain of ice, we hoped that the basin would help to break up the floe, and that theTegetthoffwould of itself return to its normal position. The gliding down of the ship, raised as it was, to its natural water-line might indeed easily end in a catastrophe, but we braved this peril when we thought of the vain attempts we had made to free her. Though the ship sunk so much in the course of the summer, that its height above the water-line was a little more than two feet in the fore-part of the ship, and three feet in the after-part, this circumstance in our favour was outweighed by the disadvantage of the rapid melting away of the ice at its sides. The ship, freed from its covering of ice, stood so high above it, that in order to guard against the danger of its overturning we were obliged, in the second half of the summer, to shore it up by strong timbers fastened to its masts. It looked no longer like a ship, but like a building ready to fall in! In the middle of July Lieutenant Weyprecht ordered Krisch, the engineer, to construct heavy chisels and borers to ascertain the thickness of the ice. After long and hard labour, we found that after boring through several ice-tables, to a depth of twenty-seven feet, we still struck on ice! Every attempt, therefore, to break through this accumulation had to be given up, and we contented ourselves with leading the basin we had formed on the fore-part round the larboard side of the ship. On the 27th of the month, twenty tons of coal were removed to the ice, in order to lighten the ship as much as possible, and every day we had to look to the props which steadied the ship, as the melting of the ice rendered them unsafe. In the following weeks, the bows continued to sink into the water, while the after-part as a natural consequence was raised up.
5. Even in the month of July, the weather was generally gloomy and unsettled. We had several times two or three inches of snow, and the showers were mingled with mist, rain, and snow, as had been the case in June. The winds were generally from the west; the mean temperature of the month was 34·7° F.; on the 8th of July, the black-bulb thermometer marked 108° F., and the temperature in the shade at the same date amounted to 34° F. But neither wind nortemperature made any change in our position. The sun on which our liberation depended was seldom visible; and the winds on which we had counted failed to blow. For weeks we watched for the formation of fissures round the ship. Fissures indeed were formed, but at such a distance that they were utterly useless to us. On the 16th of June, one opened towards the south-east; but it was at least two miles distant, and in the middle of July it was only half a mile nearer to us. Nothing, absolutely nothing, was to be seen from the deck but ice, and Klotz, coming down one day from the top-sail yard, described our position with a melancholy laconic brevity: “Nix als Eisch, und nix als Eisch, und nit a bisserl a Wosser. (Nothing but ice, ice everywhere, and not a patch of water.)” Amid such impressions all hope gradually left us. The drifting of the ice ceased to animate our hopes. Even the approach of a fissure on the 29th of July to the distance of three-quarters of a mile, in consequence of heavy gales from the south and west, ended in miserable disappointment. A movement in the ice which began a little way off on the 6th of August resulted only in the diminishing of our floe. There was no essential change in the remainder of this month, except that the monthly mean temperature fell to 32·7° F. We had the greatest extreme of heat on the 4th of August, 41·9° F.; but on the last day of the month we had 5·7 degrees of cold.
6. For some time we had been surprised by the appearance of a dark mass of ice, the distance of which prevented us from making a closer acquaintance with it. Our life on the narrow space of our floe had quite assumed the character of that of mere insects, who dwell on the leaf of a tree and care not to know its edges. Excursions of one or two miles were regarded as displaying an extraordinary amount of the spirit of enterprise and discovery. On the 14th some of us pushed on for about four miles to the group of ice just mentioned, and discovered it to be a very large iceberg. Two moraines lay on its broad back. These were the first stones and pieces of rock we had seen for a long time, and so great was our joy at these messengers of land, that we rummaged about among the heaps of rubbish, with as much zeal as ifwe had found ourselves among the treasures of India. Some of the party found what they fancied to be gold (pyrites), and gravely considered whether they would be able to take a quantity of it back to Dalmatia. Although the glaciers of Novaya Zemlya could not shed icebergs of such magnitude as that on which we now stood, we all held it for certain that it had come from thence. Not one of us had the least presentiment that it could belong to new lands, to which at that time we were near. Even the other icebergs which we discovered in increasing numbers on the following days, did not as yet speak to us the language of a message to fill us with hope and ardour. Our walk to the “dirt iceberg” was an event in our monotonous life, and was often repeated. These expeditions enabled us also to form some conception of the size of our floe, the diameter of which could not be less than six or seven miles.
7. August 18—the birthday of his Majesty our Emperor,—the ship was dressed with flags, the only form left to us of expressing our loyalty. Our dinner was as sumptuous as the circumstances permitted, though fasting would have been more appropriate, as the third day after this was the anniversary of that sad and gloomy day on which we were inclosed in the ice. In order to visit an iceberg which lay to the north-west of us, we ventured beyond our floe for the first time, and passed over a fissure to some drifting ice-floes which lay in the way. A seal lying on the ice was immediately attacked by our dogs, but succeeded after many efforts in reaching its hole. From the top of the iceberg, which was about sixty feet high, we discovered that the few openings in the ice were not navigable “leads,” but isolated holes utterly unconnected, and therefore useless for navigation.
8. We had continually drifted, since the beginning of February, first to the north-west and then to the north, with few modifications; at that date, we had reached our greatest East Longitude, and winds appeared as before to be the main cause of this drifting. At the end of that month there was a succession of calms, and we lay almost motionless in latitude 79°, and longitude 71°. The subjoined table shows our change of place in the following months.
9. The meteorological observations of the expedition, and the course of theTegetthoffhave been ably analysed by Vice-Admiral Baron von Wüllersdorf-Urbair in theMittheilungenof the Imperial Academy of Sciences of Vienna, and while I refer the curious reader to these reports for a fuller discussion of these questions, I subjoin the most important paragraphs ofthe Admiral’s report which concern the course of theTegetthoff:—
“Under ordinary circumstances a ship drifts on with the floe; is imprisoned, and necessarily obeys the force of the wind and the sea-currents. Its course, consequently, corresponds to the combined effect of these forces. But, inasmuch as theTegetthoffwas not in the free sea, but was driven along for the greater part of the time in close pack-ice, the ship not only obeyed the general movement of the ice, which was dependent on the direction of the winds and currents of the sea, but was also influenced by its vicinity to coasts and by the greater or lesser accumulation of ice.
“In so far as theTegetthoffwith her hull and masts presented a greater surface to the wind, the floe, on which it was imprisoned, would necessarily receive an excess of movement in the direction of the wind. If this excess formed an angle with the direction of the movement of the ice, the ship’s floe would deviate to the side of the least resistance, and drift according to the resultant between wind and resistance. Thus it might be that the ship’s course deviated from the wind, even in a direction opposed to it. But these anomalies certainly were not great, and could not well be estimated, because the deviations which thus arose depended on the direction of the wind, on the density and mass of the ice, on causes, in fact, which could not be exhibited under numerical relations.
“If we compare the statements, as given in theMeteorological Journal,[21]concerning the ice-drift and ice-pressures, it is seen that the maximum of both occurred in those parts of the sea in which the ship was within the action of the ice coming from the Sea of Kara, and that the greatest deviations in the ship’s course necessarily happened there.
“With respect to another abnormal deviation in the ship’s course, it cannot be doubted that this depended on the vicinity of Franz-Josef Land, towards which the masses of ice drifted under the action of continuous south-west winds; and were again driven back, thus forming a circle in their movement. It would seem natural to assume the existence of a sea-current in order to explain this peculiarity; but the configuration of that land and its coasts, or the greater or lesser amount ofimmovable ice, or, lastly, the prevailing winds in those regions, may have influenced the direction of the movement of the ice, and consequently of the ship’s course.
“If we consider the prevalence of winds, as furnished by Weyprecht’s observations for more than two years, we find south-west winds prevailing in the southern part of the seas that were navigated, and north-east winds in the northern part of those seas.
“If the sea to the east of Franz-Josef Land should not be broken by larger groups of islands, or by masses of land, but be a vast range of ocean, the winds would be free from the influence of land, and blow in a north-easterly direction, and exhibit, so to speak, the phenomenon of a Polar north-east trade wind. If it should be the case that north-east winds prevail to the north of the 78th or 79th degree of north latitude, and, at the same time, south-west winds to the south of that same degree, the notion of a sea-current must be dismissed, and a revolving movement in the ice assumed, in the opposite direction to the hands of a clock. The observations of Weyprecht on these winds establish their circulatory character. The curve of deviation in the course of theTegetthoffseems to be in harmony with this assumption. But these suppositions cannot be accepted, until observations be made on the winds to the south of 79° N. L. at the same season of the year with those which were so successfully made by Weyprecht to the north of this degree.
“The following arguments, however, would seem to favour the supposition of the existence of a sea-current. The curve at the commencement of its deviation corresponds pretty nearly with the direction which the Gulf Stream would take after passing round Norway, and in its further course with that current, which comes out of the Sea of Kara between Novaya Zemlya and Cape Taimyr, and which undoubtedly exists, though its course has to be more accurately determined.
“However small may be the value we assign to the winds in explanation of the deviation in theTegetthoff’scourse, it is at any rate impossible to ascribe those phenomena to the influence of the coast formation. We must, therefore, assume either, that the different directions of the wind produce aconstant circulation of the ice in the sea to the north of 79°; or that currents known to exist in this and contiguous seas cannot be excluded from the small part of the ocean lying between Novaya Zemlya and Franz-Josef Land.”
From these and other grounds the Vice-Admiral Baron von Wüllersdorf draws the following conclusions:—
“It is probable that there exists a sea-current in the seas between Novaya Zemlya and Franz-Josef Land; that at any rate, its existence cannot positively be denied, although the prevailing winds may produce similar phenomena.
“That there is a great probability that the Ocean stretches far to the north and east beyond the eastern end of Novaya Zemlya.”